I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

This morning I awoke to a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow. (Okay, okay---no more quotes, I promise.) The trouble is, I had planned my outfit before looking outside. I was wearing jeans and a button-up shirt. Had I known it had snowed (and so much and so deep!) I would have worn a skirt.

"A skirt?" you ask.

"Yes," I reply. "A skirt."

The fact is that I have short legs. Having short legs wouldn't be so bad if I could find short jeans to go with them, but it's actually very difficult for me to find jeans short enough for my legs. (In one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, Calvin is wearing his regular outfit and someone suggests he go put on shorts. He responds that he is wearing shorts. I'm like that.) This summer, I asked Ambrosia if I could borrow a pair of pants. As she went through her jean collection, she pulled out a pair triumphantly, announcing that I would really love them because they were really long. I told her that I absolutely could not wear a pair of pants that were really long by her standards because they'd be about twice the length of my legs. So she pulled out her very shortest pair of jeans and let me borrow them. They were a full three inches too long for my legs.

What having abnormally stubby legs and no sewing machine means is that my jeans always drag on the ground under my shoes. And what that means when there's snow is that by the time I've travelled exactly 1/8 of a mile, my pants are soaked up to my knees. (In fact, I've even considered writing a poem called "My pants are soaked up to my knees.")

And so it is that I try to wear skirts on snowy days.

As I had already mentioned, I was wearing jeans, and not only was I wearing jeans, but I was wearing jeans that I haven't fit into for a very long time, so I didn't want to give up that euphoria and put on a skirt. My solution was to roll the bottoms of my jeans up so that they had no chance of getting wet. This meant that they were rolled above my ankles.

And so I set off to campus, wearing rolled jeans and my newest, most fantastic brown shoes. The sidewalks weren't plowed (do sidewalks get plowed down here?) so I was trudging through slush and snow, avoiding puddles, and not getting my pants wet. Blissful.

I passed a boy from my ward and carried on a brief conversation with him as both of us were on opposite sides of the street and neither of us actually stopped walking:

"HEY!"

"HELLO!"

"WHERE ARE YOU HEADED?"

"CLASS!"

"HAVE FUN! . . . YOU SHOULD WEAR SOCKS!"

"IF I DON'T WEAR SOCKS, THEY CAN'T GET WET!"

"THAT'S BRILLIANT!"

I continued my walk, boosted by an awareness of my own genius, till I came across a snowman, tall, tall, tall. (sorry! I promise, no quotes now!) But seriously. This thing was massive. It was about eight feet high and was wearing a blue tarp as a cape. I noticed the definition of every abdominal and pectoral muscle of the snowman. These guys had put a lot of work into it, and why should I have been surprised seeing as it was in the yard of a house with a sign that says, "The Pick-Up Place"?

But I just happened to be walking past the snowman when two men came out of the house. One was fully clothed, but the other had no shirt, and I must say, I noticed every abdominal and pectoral muscle of that man, too. Of course, by this time I couldn't help laughing out loud as I walked by. I'm really not one to stare when I see men without shirts (in fact, I've found it humorous if not slightly depressing to note when I'm in the presence of my gay friends, when a man goes running by with no shirt on, mine is the only head that doesn't turn). But I felt compelled to look back at the snowman and his boy, as the other man was taking their picture.

And that was just enough time . . .

. . . for me to step ankle-deep into a slush puddle.

I knew there was a reason I didn't look at shirtless men. Now, lest you mother me and tell me that in a situation like this, I should have been wearing proper clothing, please reflect what would have happened if I had been wearing proper clothing. I would have had a soaked-through shoe, a soaked-through sock, and a soaked-through pant leg for the rest of the five hours I'd be on campus. As it was, my shoe dried quickly while I sat barefoot in my first class.

I have the short-leg problem too, Cicada. This is exacerbated (I probably spelled that wrong, but it's too good a word to pass up just because I don't know how to spell it) by the fact that I often sit on my feet in class. This has resulted, on multiple occasions, with me standing up after a class with a wet and muddy butt.

This is why I always wear a coat or a sweater on days when my pant cuffs might get wet. You never know when you might need to cover your butt.

Those boys are in my ward (including the snowman) and so if you would like to wreak vengeance on them for being present when all of your careful planning went to waste, just let me know. Also, wearing a skirt on snowy days is pure genius.

About Irish Spring: Okay, okay. It's not at all as bad as I made it out to be.

Ambrosia: What gets me is that I have noticed that it's somehow the homeowner's job to shovel the sidewalk in front of his or her home. What this means to pedestrians is that for fifty feet, walking is easy going. After that, you're trudging through slush and snow again till you cross the property of another responsible homeowner. What gives?

SB: It was worth a lot. Thank you.

Jared: Go you too!

EYoA: I couldn't agree more! Or I hate getting to class and then starting to sweat because of the temp change from outside to inside.

Brinestone: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Limon: Have you ever considered confining yourself to a wheelchair? That way you'd be impervious to low tide and slush puddles permanently!

Photogenic: I knew once I realized that I'd be writing this post that someone out there would know those guys. What I want to know is if girls actually ever show up to their house asking for dates because it's the Pick-Up Place.

I can join you in bemoaning the short legs/long pants situation. Yuck. I've always got soggy ankles. I finally found a pair of maternity jeans with a short inseam, but they have tapered legs. So now at least I have two options of dorkiness to choose from...

Holy cow, where did you get that picture? All I can think is how uncomfortable that is and how much I would be yanking and tugging in an unattractive manner all day long.

And I can relate to the short leg thing, although mine are just a weird length due to the fact that I have a long torso, long thighs, and short calves. So they're too long for petites and too short for regular pants, which means I can only wear my hot Ann Taylor regular-length pants with 3-inch heels. Eh, I suppose it adds to the hotness factor, right?